February 3,2009
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News: Heartland Gets Class Action.
Chimicles & Tilellis LLP of Haverford, PA are the first in seeking Class Action against our nations fifth-largest credit card processor. On Inauguration Day, Princeton, New Jersey-based Heartland Payment Systems, issued an announcement that their secure credit card system had been breached. The system handles about 100 million credit card transactions every month. Estimated figures were not provided in the announcement but, this may be the largest credit card breach of its kind, so far.
Back in July of 2007, retailer TJX had a similar credit card breach that had lasted for 17 months. Their initial announcement only estimated the breach to have affected 45 million victims. After a class action lawsuit invoked further investigation, it was found that the more accurate estimate was 96 million credit card accounts. More than double, that was originally reported. Upon this finding, this breach was listed as being the largest in history.
So now, with this class action suit against Heartland, its entirely possible that this same pattern will be found. It has not been confirmed how many months were involved in the Heartland breach. So, Chimicles & Tilellis LLP filed their suit on with Tuesday the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. On behalf Alicia Cooper of Woodbury, MN allegations suggest that Heartland "made unreasonably belated and inaccurate statements concerning the breach." The action asserts that the credit card processor appears to have failed to exercise adequate credit card monitoring services.
The claim also suggests that the omission of how long this breach went undetected misleads the public to believe that only one month was involved, insinuating that only 100 million credit card transactions were involved.
If the breach had been in effect for several months, then millions more credit card transactions would have been compromised. As yet, Heartland has not committed the duration of this breach.